The preferred habitat of Rhinanthus minor is dry fields or meadows; it tolerates a wide range of soil types.

Yellow rattle is used to create or restore wildflower meadows, where it maintains species diversity by suppressing dominant grasses and the recycling of soil nutrients.

The leaves are sessile (they grow directly from the stem), somewhat heart-shaped at the base, otherwise ovate (oval-shaped) to lanceolate (shaped like a lance tip), dentate (toothed) and scabrid (a little rough to the touch).

The silvery-coloured fruit is a dry capsule, which contains loose, rattling seeds when ripe that give the plant one of its common names.

[1][8] The herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, in his The English Physician (first published in 1652), wrote of yellow rattle as being "good for cough, or dimness of sight".

[5] The preferred habitat of Rhinanthus minor is dry fields or meadows, where its flowering period is in the summer between May and September,[1] but it can thrive with semi-natural species-rich water-meadows.

[18] Research, including that at the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has shown that encouraging it to grow in hay meadows greatly increases biodiversity, by restricting grass growth and thereby allowing other species to thrive.

[14] In the northeastern United States, yellow rattle is considered a pest, as it decreases crop yields of grass and hay.

Where the plant is found to have infested farmland it has to be suppressed; non-herbicidal strategies for removing it include the application of wood ash and sawdust on affected pastures.

[14] Studies have shown that the plant's role in maintaining species diversity is through differential growth suppression effects and enhanced soil nutrient recycling.

[5] The yellow rattle seed is sown thinly onto grassland where gaps have been created,[14] or where all the grass has been cut back and the clippings removed.